Current collaborative systems allow for an individual user to set his or her presence or status such that other users can see if he or she is available. For example, chat clients can indicate whether the user is available to chat or whether he or she is currently busy with other tasks. The user's personal status can indicate to others whether there is a special way to communicate with him or her outside of the chat tool. Chat clients can also allow for a person to set up his or her own list of contacts and groups within the system.
However, such systems are limited. For example, the individual status or present value for a user of these current tools is singular. That is, the user's status cannot be set differently for any of the individuals or groups in the user's contact list, let alone any other users or groups within the system. For example, if a certain user sets his or her status to “busy,” then his or her personal status is set to “busy” for all of that user's contacts and groups with which he maintains a connection, regardless of the significance of any of those groups or individual contacts to the user.